Angry sells.

Have you noticed? You probably have. I mean, isn’t that why we are living in these unprecidented times? Angry people, rage, fails, and violence all seem to generate more clicks, more views, voter turnout?

I wrote a couple weeks ago about the weird fluctuations in my traffic. Some days I get a lot of clicks and some days almost nothing. I tossed some advertising modules up on the site because, hell, if I’m going to start needing to deal with increased traffic I may as well turn that into bucks to pay my hosting fees.

But, truth be told, I’m probably not angry enough. Not even close.

Look. It’s simple.

I’m not picking fights with other bloggers or accusing people of hate crimes or committing hate crimes (I hope) or tearing apart the creative works of others for my own self-agrandizement. (Although this is sort of a critique of the social zeitgeist, so there is an argument that I am being negative about negativity to promote positivity, blah, blah, whatever.) I’m doing none of that. I could. I mean it’s so easy to be mad and pissy and negative. And I’d get a helluva lot more traffic.

It’s an angry world and anger sells.

The roaring twenties are roaring cuz everyone is pissed off all the time and roaring negative about damn near everything. It is almost performative. Like, people are hating on others for the lolz and the clicks. Literally.

I do catch myself playing that game, too. Creeping into being mad.

And I mean, look, honestly, you can be part of that obtusely unaware crowd of people who think rage and anger and being an asshole are somehow flags of independent thought rather that what they really are—the soup of the day—but I see through a lot of it, personally. That’s such an easy clear path to follow. It’s like lazy af and lit by a neon casino glow. It’s fake and wonderful and terrible and always so fucking lazy. But then what do I know. Maybe that’s just age writing. Hell, I’m creeping up on fifty. How did that happen? Yeah, maybe I am just naive. Maybe I just don’t want to lean into the clicks, huh?

My truth is just that, as I wrote above, angry sells. And I’m not even close to angry enough to bank on this blog…

…which was never the point when I started writing it. Still isn’t.

If you have stumbled upon this site, congrats. The Algorithm doesn’t want you here. You have entered a place where there is nothing to be sold, nothing to be bought, nothing about which to tear off your shirt in a spitting rage. I have been trying—not always succeeding, but trying—to lean positive.

That is not performative. That is just me. I’m not inclined to rage on differences, or tear down effort in any form or demand a level of quality that I could not first deliver myself (which is virtually never.) I am most just here to point and say huh, isn’t that thing that happened a thing that happened and wasn’t it mildly interesting?

That doesn’t sell.

But you are here reading it, so maybe there is hope for the world not being completely sold out to hate and anger, right?